This image below is described as the 'best fit' of current continents and the oceanic ridges. The hydroplate theory is offered by as creationist scientist as a better explanation to what we know of geology and physics as compared to standard plate tectonic theory. It's been around for nearly 30 years but it was only this week that I discovered it.

I killed a small tree and printed out the cited article. But I don't think I've going to get it read tonight (now ~8:45 pm my time), much less discuss it. Maybe in 24 hours you'll hear back from me.

One thing - I'm pretty sure Walt Brown is an old Earth creationist. I don't know in what time frame he puts "the flood".

Moose

Hello Moose, and welcome out of lurker mode. I lurked this forum for years before I decided to join (despite having known Fred for almost a decade through RMCF) and still prefer lurking to posting.

But, to the point, I think you're mistaken about Walt Brown being an old earther. A quick browse through his web site yielded this page where he begins to argue that most dating techniques indicate the earth is 10,000 years old or less.

But, to the point, I think you're mistaken about Walt Brown being an old earther. A quick browse through his web site yielded this page where he begins to argue that most dating techniques indicate the earth is 10,000 years old or less.

Yeah, the "off the top of my head" fails again. I was thinking of Hugh Ross.

Lets apply the scientific method. It's actually easy, everybody can do it at home.

According to the "theory" (hypothesis technically) there were oceans under the crust of the earth, the argument being that this is like the moons of jupiter which have may oceans under the ice on their surface.

Here's the experiment:

Step 1) Take a glass of water and put an ice cube in it.

Ice floats, so this confirms jupiter's moons could have these subterranian oceans under the ice.

Step 2) Take the same glass of water and put some dirt and rocks in it.

Dirt and rocks do not float, so the hypothesis is completely physically impossible.

Lets apply the scientific method. It's actually easy, everybody can do it at home.

According to the "theory" (hypothesis technically) there were oceans under the crust of the earth, the argument being that this is like the moons of jupiter which have may oceans under the ice on their surface.

Here's the experiment:

Step 1) Take a glass of water and put an ice cube in it.

Ice floats, so this confirms jupiter's moons could have these subterranian oceans under the ice.

Step 2) Take the same glass of water and put some dirt and rocks in it.

Dirt and rocks do not float, so the hypothesis is completely physically impossible.

When you can get dirt and rocks to float in water, call me.

Well, why don't you give us a call as soon as you can demonstrate that the hydroplate theory has anything to do with dirt "floating" on water.

Hi,
I suppose my first impression was formed looking at the 'fit' of the continents in the image I referenced. This is significantly different from most 'Pangea' drawings that I have seen all my life. I believe there is certainly some merit to the 'fitting'. I gotta say, I saw a photo of some clay that had been stretched onto the current configuration of continents on a 'globe'. This allowed the person then to slide the continents about in order to align them different ways with the underwater ridges. This was a pretty neat idea and preceded 3D graphic modeling.

I'm looking to buy a cheap globe and try this for myself. Not sure how to get the clay from falling off of the earth. =)

Regarding Dr. Brown, he is a PhD in mechanical engineering from MIT. He earned his PhD in a time before electronic calculators and computers became the 'crutch and tool' they are today. I'm guessing he was solid in solving math problems. His larger work was very impressive based upon my non-expert knowledge of geology. So, simply dismissing his paper on the basis on one objection seems a bit premature.

I have worked some with hydraulics. I've seen oil (lower density than water) support incredible mass much more denser than water in cylinders, where seals forced the water to compression and balancing out the weight of the mass forcing downward.

Also, if I have two metal spheres, with one the size of a basketball and the other a millimeter greater in radius, and I add water between the two spheres, and evacuate all air, it is possible to suspend the outer sphere on the inner sphere without touching.

I found Dr. Brown's descripture of the 'rupture' phase very interesting and worthy of consideration.

Secular historiographers date the writting of the book of Genesis to about 3,500 years ago. I suppose the Bible could be a work of fiction. However the author's reference "the fountains of the great deep burst open" is absolutely remarkable. It's one thing to blame rainfall, melting snow, or breaking dams for flooding. This author's insight into the earth bursting opening is truly beyond what we would consider to be ancient man's knowledge of geology.

Dr. Brown rejects the canopy theory citing the violation of physics. He does explain the floodgates as rainfall triggered by the rupture along 40,000+ miles of earth crust and the bursting forth of the water from the deep.

Anyway, I'll buy his book on Amazon shortly and give it a go. It's nice to see a scientist think outside the box, even if he is wrong.

It's the claim that there were oceans of water under the earth - how is that not dirt and rocks floating on water?

And the article you cite uses the term "ocean" loosely to refer to traces of water in rock formations (0.1%) which over a continent, add up to the equivalent of an ocean.

What? More hair-splitting? Rocks have no problem being above water as long as they are supported in some way. If you have any evidence that a large body of water cannot exist below the earth then present it, instead of inventing silly kitchen experiments.

The expanding earth theory works best.
If you shrink the earth by 60%, all the land masses on the planet connect with each other.
Even the Bible says that God stretched the earth out from under the (flood) water.
It was a clue we have missed since those words were first written down.
It explains where all the flood water went as well.
The expanding earth theory was first proposed in the 1930's.
The theory is picking up steam since we can't find any definitive subduction zones anywhere on the planet.
The earth is expanding at it's rifts which no one argues about.
It was believed that this the earth gets subducted (recycled) back under plates but where?
Subduction zones should be the most violent places on the planet but after mapping the oceans bottom, we don't see it.
Pangaea doesn't work because you must remove Mexico to make the land masses fit.
Not so with the expanding earth.
It explains how mountains are formed by folding (not uplift).

Hi,
I don't have an opinion on an expanding earth theory. I'll do some reading. Funny, I just spent some time reading on the 'inflation' of the universe at the moment of the big bang. I guess it all corresponds to my 'expanding waistline'. =)

@Moose,
My initial observation was simply the first page of the referenced link above. It applies a simple 'arrange the puzzle pieces' fit.

What? More hair-splitting? Rocks have no problem being above water as long as they are supported in some way. If you have any evidence that a large body of water cannot exist below the earth then present it, instead of inventing silly kitchen experiments.

I can see why you bring up examples like pistons and rocks being supported "in some way", I think you might be picturing a scenario like the Earth being a sphere of rock containing an underlying sphere of water ?

First, let's talk about why water would tend to float on the rock instead of the other way around : it's because of how gravity works. It's proportional to mass, so more massive things will have a stronger force acting on them pulling them towards the center of the planet. So denser things (i.e. those that have more mass per unit volume) will tend to end up under lighter things. This doesn't only work for liquids; if you take a box containing objects of different densities (maybe stones, coins, bits of plastic, bits of styrofoam...) and you shake it, the denser objects will end up at the bottom. That's the most stable configuration.

Now in the example of the oil supporting the metal piston, here the forces that would tend to have the oil end up on top (the difference in gravitational attraction of the oil and the metal) is completely negligible compared to the tensile strength of the metal, because the masses of oil and metal involved are quite small.

Now let's picture a shell of rock containing an inner shell of water. One could think this is an unstable equilibrium: the water "wants" to be on top, but as long as the rocky shell contains it it can't leave, like the oil in the piston, and so the system will stay that way.

However the masses involved now are huge, i.e. the gravitational forces are enormous, and the tensile strength of rock hasn't changed. The crust will buckle under its own weight as large masses of rock tend to do when not supported from underneath (see : cave-ins) (and "the Earth's crust" is a larger mass of rock than we can picture), and once the first crack appears the water will gush through, breaking the crust up even more and the rock will sink to the bottom of the underground ocean, as the piston would sink into the oil if there were a hole or crack the oil could gush through.

And that's why talking about rocks or ice floating on water is the correct analogy to use, because those things involve density differences, and at the planetary scale density differences are the most important factor at play, above tensile strength.

EDIT : I suppose one could say the whole "crust buckling under its own weight and water gushing through" did happen and was the flood, but that doesn't work - the configuration is so unstable that break would happen almost immediately. And if God was actively supporting the rock to keep it from collapsing then that would imply that the world before the flood was unstable and pretty much set up for that flood to happen, which is a strange concept.

Hello forum, long time no see ! I can see why you bring up examples like pistons and rocks beingI think you might be picturing a scenario like the Earth being a sphere of rock containing an underlying sphere of water ?

No, what on earth gave you that idea?

If the topology of the earth was flatter prior to the flood then all that would be needed would be a body of subterranean water large enough to cover the land that existed during that time. And drawing concusions about such things as the the "tensile strength of rock" can hardly be done without actually knowing what the "tensile strenght of rock" was at that time.

The earth we see today is covered by a thick layer of sedimentary rock. A pre-flood would not have that kind of unstable crust.

No, what on earth gave you that idea? If the topology of the earth was flatter prior to the flood then all that would be needed would be a body of subterranean water large enough to cover the land that existed during that time. And drawing concusions about such things as the the "tensile strength of rock" can hardly be done without actually knowing what the "tensile strenght of rock" was at that time. The earth we see today is covered by a thick layer of sedimentary rock. A pre-flood would not have that kind of unstable crust.

Basalt will also collapse under its own weight, you just need a whole lot more weight to do it. And that's the thing, "the Earth's crust" involves a mind-boggling amount of weight. And a system of underground cavities large enough to contain half of the Earth's oceans would be large enough to be an issue, and that's what the paper linked to by eclectic1993 posits.

Note that other planets' crusts show faults and deformations, as one would expect if gravitational stresses on a planetwide scale are enough to deform and break rock, sedimentary or not. Did God modify them too after the flood ? Or did he create the Earth to have a radically different rock strength or divinely-maintained structure from the other planets, only to make it become similar to them after the flood ?

Basalt will also collapse under its own weight, you just need a whole lot more weight to do it. And that's the thing, "the Earth's crust" involves a mind-boggling amount of weight. And a system of underground cavities large enough to contain half of the Earth's oceans would be large enough to be an issue, and that's what the paper linked to by eclectic1993 posits. Note that other planets' crusts show faults and deformations, as one would expect if gravitational stresses on a planetwide scale are enough to deform and break rock, sedimentary or not. Did God modify them too after the flood ? Or did he create the Earth to have a radically different rock strength or divinely-maintained structure from the other planets, only to make it become similar to them after the flood ?

I'm not qualified to evaluate whether or not Walt brown's ideas hold "water". Perhaps you are? But simply saying basalt "collapses under its own weight" does not excite me that much. Neither do "mind-boggling" claims about how much weight something has "boggle" my mind.

Using weight as a parameter in an equation that totally lacks parameter values is not "worth it's weight", and whether or not something collapses under its own weight depends on how it is supported, just as I implied in my post.

I also think it is astonishing that you try to draw my attention to stresses, faults and deformities in other planets. The only cause I would have in believing that they had any impact at all on what has happened here on earth would be to pre-suppose a completely naturalistic origin of the earth and of the universe.

I don't.

What I think you should be asking yourself is why NONE of these other planets are covered with as much water as the earth is.

I'm not qualified to evaluate whether or not Walt brown's ideas hold "water". Perhaps you are? But simply saying basalt "collapses under its own weight" does not excite me that much. Neither do "mind-boggling" claims about how much weight something has "boggle" my mind. Using weight as a parameter in an equation that totally lacks parameter values is not "worth it's weight", and whether or not something collapses under its own weight depends on how it is supported, just as I implied in my post. I also think it is astonishing that you try to draw my attention to stresses, faults and deformities in other planets. The only cause I would have in believing that they had any impact at all on what has happened here on earth would be to pre-suppose a completely naturalistic origin of the earth and of the universe. I don't. What I think you should be asking yourself is why NONE of these other planets are covered with as much water as the earth is.

Um... I'm using mass as a variable in the equation not a parameter, and I'm not sure which equation you're talking about that "totally lacks parameter values". Or do you mean you want me to write out the equations for you ?

And a crust of rock on a cavern full of water is supported by 1) the water, and 2) the rock's own strength. What else is supporting the Earth's crust in your scenario ? God could be holding it up by divine intervention I guess but that gets back to my question of why God would create a world that's predisposed for a catastrophic collapse.

As for other planets, I'm not talking about them having any impact on what's going on on Earth (why would they, even with naturalistic causes ? Not sure where you were going with that). But I assume you think God created the other planets as well. If God originally created the Earth's crust to incredibly strong so it didn't crack under gravitational pressure, and that crust became the tectonic, breakable one we know today after the flood, then what were the crusts of the other planets like when God created them ?

As for why he other planets are covered with as much liquid water as Earth is that's actually very simple and basic physics. High temperatures vaporize water, solar wind blows light, volatile gases (such as vaporized water) outwards. Low temperatures freeze water. There is a certain range of temperatures (0 to 100 degrees C under atmospheric pressure) where water is liquid.The Sun is the main source of heat in the Solar System and that heat spreads out according to an inverse square law, so there's a continuum of high to low temperatures as we get further and further away from the Sun. This means there is a specific range of distances from the Sun where liquid water will exist. Astronomers call that range the "Goldilocks zone". Earth is in it, the other planets aren't. The outer planets have plenty of water, it's just not liquid (except possibly for Europa).

EDIT : I'm trying to track down the tensile strength of basaltic crusts and so on, but in the meantime here is somebody else doing the maths on a few aspects of hydroplate theory :http://mypage.direct...iter/hydro.html

And a crust of rock on a cavern full of water is supported by 1) the water, and 2) the rock's own strength. What else is supporting the Earth's crust in your scenario ? God could be holding it up by divine intervention I guess but that gets back to my question of why God would create a world that's predisposed for a catastrophic collapse.

How much of the earth's crust are you talking about? How big a cavern? Why would God need to support it "divinely"? I don't see why you think divine intervention is necessary to support anything unless you are making assumptions. Subteranean water doesn't necessesarily have to be in one gigantic chamber, does it? As far I can see from the Genesis account there were multiple places where subteranean water was involved in the flood.

If God originally created the Earth's crust to incredibly strong so it didn't crack under gravitational pressure, and that crust became the tectonic, breakable one we know today after the flood, then what were the crusts of the other planets like when God created them ?

Again, I don't understand what the crusts of other planets have to do with the earth, just as I don't know where you get the idea that God created the earth with a crust that was "incredibly strong". How strong, or how weak the earth's crust was has absolutely nothing to do with anything unless, once again, you are trying to assert a purely naturalistic explanation for the flood.

I’m doing this at home, without internet access. All quoted material is from the “Dr. Walt Brown’s Hydroplate Theory” article, cited in message 1. As I said in my previous message, since no specific points were raised, I’m free to choose what I comment on. And a just before posting note: All of this message was prepared yesterday, before I saw any of the topic’s most recent messages.

The hydroplate theory is an alternate explanation of both the events of the Noahic flood, the present-day geological features of the world, and the actual mechanisms that operated then and continue to do so now. It directly challenges the current plate tectonics model of large-scale geology, and it suggests a major revamping of the geological events associated with the flood that God sent upon the world in light of a hard-line exegetical approach to the text of Genesis. It represents, then, a serious attempt at reconstructing the science of geology from the ground up.

The hydroplate hypothesis is wishful thinking to come up with a water source for the flood.

(2) Ten miles below the pre-Flood Earth’s surface were interconnected chambers of subterranean water — containing roughly half the liquid volume of today’s oceans. These chambers formed a thin, spherical shell of water with a mean thickness of 5/8 of a mile. This answers to the Biblical “waters of the deep” that burst open during the Noahic Flood. These waters contained enormous amounts of dissolved gases and minerals, particularly salt (NaCl) and carbon dioxide (CO2). A layer of basalt was situated between these waters and the Earth’s upper mantle.

OK. Doesn’t make sense from the scientific perspective, but if God wanted to create the Earth that way, so be it (for sake of discussion).

So, it seems that God created a vast reservoir of water, to have handy in case he needed to flood the Earth. Actually, the instability of this situation would seem to make the flood inevitable. One thing the paragraph doesn’t mention, is that the waters would also contain enormous amounts of heat. Can you say “pressure cooker?”

(6) Plate tectonic theory gained acceptance when an important discovery of the 1960s was misinterpreted. People were told that paralleling the Mid-Oceanic Ridge are bands of ocean floor that have a reversed magnetic orientation. At a few places, the pattern of “reversals” on one side is almost a mirror image of those on the other side. This suggested that the magnetic poles of the earth reversed in the distant past, and that molten rock spreading away from the ridge solidified, took on the earth’s current magnetic orientation, and moved outward from the ridge like a conveyor belt.

This story is inaccurate. There are no magnetic reversals on the ocean floor, and no compass would reverse direction if brought near the supposedly “reversed” bands in the Atlantic. There is, however, a fluctuation in magnetic intensity (see Figure 3 below). Someone merely drew a dashed line through these fluctuations and labeled everything below this average intensity a “reversal.” The false but widespread notion is that these deviations from the average represent the magnetic field from millions of years ago. This faulty understanding has prevented the formulation of a better explanation for these magnetic anomalies, including the added consideration that many of these bands are not parallel to the ridge, but perpendicular to it and lined up with fracture zones, contrary to plate tectonic predictions.

Offhand, I don’t know why this is important to the hypothesis, but the magnetic reversals are very real. Evidence can also be found in the continental rocks. There is even a location (IIRC, Steens Mountain in Oregon) where the volcanic pile actually records the reversal event itself.

True, from any distance you’re going to see only increases and decreases in magnetic field strength. But that is because the Earth’s current magnetic field is superimposed and largely overwhelms the rock generated magnetic field. But close up measurements can see the rocks changing magnetic polarities.

The Rupture Phase of the Noahic flood began as increasing pressure in the subterranean water stretched the overlying crust, just as a balloon stretches when the pressure inside it increases. Eventually, this shell of rock reached its failure point.

Good thing God had reason to flood the Earth. Sounds to me like it was going to happen anyway.

The temperature of the escaping subterranean waters increased by about 100°F as they were forced from the high pressure chamber. The hot water, being less dense, rose to the surface of the flood waters. There, high evaporation occurred, increasing the salt content of the remaining water.

High evaporation rate? More like boiling. Stand by to be cooked.

The Recovery Phase followed the compression event, and entailed the receding of the flood waters as the mountains were buckled and folded up from the leading edges of the sliding hydroplates.

Simultaneously, the violent force of the upward surging subterranean water was “choked off ” as the plates settled onto the floor of the subterranean chamber. Without sinking hydroplates to produce the high pressure flow, water was no longer being forced through the rupture. Instead, the deep basins between the continents became reservoirs into which the flood waters returned.

So that’s where all the water went. But all the oceans water is not enough to cover the highest mountains, even if the ocean floors were at what is now sea level. Many years ago I did some calculations. As I recall, making the oceans floors at sea level would raise sea level along the lines of a couple thousand feet.

Drainage of the waters that covered the earth left every continental basin filled to the brim with water. Some of these postflood lakes lost more water by evaporation and seepage than they gained by rainfall and drainage from higher elevations. Consequently, they shrank over the centuries. A well-known example was former Lake Bonneville which became the Great Salt Lake.

A glacial lake in a closed basin. No need to invoke the flood to explain it.

The article is a big pile of baloney, to be filed under “science fiction”. I’m now going to make whoever cares bring specific points they wish to discuss.